As I sat up and came to, Mima shoved a card at me. For one moment I thought she was going to push it down my throat, then she shoved it into my hand.

“Hatty Birtie, Mummy, your card.”

“Goodness, that is so kind of you,” I said smiling wanting the world to leave me in peace for another hour’s sleep. I opened the card and there was some scribble across the bottom, under which Stella had written, ‘to Mummy love from Mima’.

I gave her a hug and a kiss and she bounced on the bed with me. Stella had disappeared, I thought to go to the loo, but she opened the door and called Mima, who scrambled off the bed and snatched something from her, then she came bouncing back with package in hand.

I transpired to be a DVD of Mamma Mia, which I thought Simon would enjoy more than me, but I tried to be gracious about my gifts, and hugged and kissed her again. “It’s just what I wanted, Mima, you are a clever young lady.” Stella snorted from the doorway.

“I’ve put the kettle on, are you coming down?”

“Yeah, just let me use the loo first. Mima do you need to go?” She did and accompanied me to the bathroom where we weed and washed. Then down for breakfast.

Mima was so excited, Stella gave me a new bird watching book, and a pair of cycling mitts. Mima, of course, had to open them for me. Tom had left a small present on the table with a card. The small gift turned out to be a gold bracelet which was absolutely beautiful, and fitted my wrist perfectly. Stella admired it and Mima wanted to kiss it. Strange things, children.

I had just finished my breakfast and cleaned the mess off Mima’s high chair when the doorbell rang. Stella suddenly seemed busy with Mima, which made me suspicious. However, she wasn’t going to answer the door and the bell rang again. Reluctantly, I got up to answer it.

I opened the door and was met by someone carrying a huge bouquet of flowers, “Caffy Watts?” said an slightly familiar voice.

“Yes,” I replied and the flowers dropped a few inches for me to recognise Simon standing behind them. I squealed and made my way around the herbiage he was holding to hug and kiss him. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to take you out to lunch, Stella said she’d look after Mighty Mouse for a couple of hours.”

“I wondered why she wasn’t answering the door.”

“Can I come in and put these flowers down, they’re heavy with all this water.” They were done in such a way as to have a bulb of plastic under the wrapping which was filled with water.

He came in and put the bouquet down on a table in the hall. Just then, Mima came shrieking into the hallway and threw herself at Simon. “Daddy,” she shouted as she became airborne.

He caught her and I grabbed the flowers. Thankfully both were safe and she hugged and giggled as he hugged and kissed her. They seemed to be bonding so well. If things went against us, I didn’t like to speculate who would be the more upset. I think it was even money.

After I’d washed and dressed and done the same with Mima, we settled down to a typical domestic morning for any typically dysfunctional family. Actually, it was quite funny, Mima wanted to arrange my flowers–I wanted them left alone, the arrangement they came in was adequate for me.

So it was only when I suggested Mima help me make the next batch of bread, that she relented from making my life hell. Once this was done and the machine running, she heard some post arrive and went haring off to the front door. She returned with about six or seven cards for me and a couple of things for Tom. Unfortunately, she opened them before I could stop her. Simon found this hilarious–well he would wouldn’t he, oversized schoolboy.

While Mima laid waste the rest of my mail, I popped the ones opened in error, on Tom’s desk with a post-it, apologising for the vandalism. Just before lunch, Stella told Mima she would take her to the park to feed the ducks. She had bought a cheap supermarket loaf for the job, and while she was sorting Mima out with wellies and fleecy jacket, I made her a sandwich and a drink for her lunch, and also one for Stella.

Five minutes after they went, I put on some make up and a quirt of perfume and off we went in Simon’s Jaguar. “I’m sure I could drive this car,” I asserted, as much out of devilment as genuine desire.

“If James Bond can, I’m sure you could too, except not this one.”

“Aww, why not?” I protested in a whiney voice.

“Because I will kill you.” He flashed as false a smile as he could manufacture.

“Oh, okay.” I shrugged. I knew he was teasing, least I thought he was.

“You didn’t put up much of a fight?” he commented.

“I didn't want you to kill me,” I simpered back.

“As if I would.”

“But I don’t know that, do I?” I did perfectly well, I was just getting my own back. Since he’d said I couldn’t drive it, I was all the more determined.

We arrived at a pub out towards Eastleigh, and Simon led me to the table he’d pre-booked. On one place was a single red rose. He steered me towards it. I was still going to drive his car.

He ordered a starter of melon, a main course of lemon sole, and a sweet of sorbet. He certainly knew my taste. But if he knew me that well, he should also have known I was going to drive his car. It now became a certainty.

“Are we having no wine?” I asked innoncently.

“You can if you like, I’m driving.”

“Go on, Si, you can have one if you’re eating.”

“Hmmm, I’m not so sure, better not.”

I made an excuse to go to the loo and while I was away, had a pint of Guinness sent to our table. I needed him to sink another, then I could demand to drive on the grounds he could be over the limit.

“What did you send this to me for?” he challenged when I got back to my seat.

“I thought you’d enjoy it, and it’s a thank you for my lunch.”

“As long as you don’t think you can make me incapable of driving, because if I become so, the car stays here and we get a cab back, understood.”

“Of course I do, darling, I’m happy with that.” Okay so I was lying and he’d seen through the first bit. I just needed to get sneakier–now what would Stella do next?

The meal was excellent, and I was quite happy to drink cranberry juice instead of alcohol. Simon stuck at one pint, and I was beginning to worry that he’d thwarted me when he went off to the loo and slipped on a wet floor and wrenched his knee.

It wasn’t an ambulance job, but he needed urgent attention–guess what? Hee hee, he was in so much pain that he begged me to take him to the hospital. I needed no second bidding. So, twenty minutes later we were screaming our way to the Queen Alex and casualty. The car went like a dream, the patient went like a siren–one on a fire engine. He squealed and squawked all the way there.

I parked up after escorting him into the A&E department. Bloody hospital car parks, they are an expensive nuisance. I paid for three hours, but Simon was seen in minutes, he was now in real distress with it. They whipped him off for X-ray, so I called Stella and explained what had happened.

“So who drove his car?”

“I did, why? It’s no big deal.”

“What? You are joking, he wanted the ignition to run on fingerprints or iris patterns.”

“It’s only a car, Stella, I get more excited about bikes.”

“Okay then, I’ll come up in your car with Mima and you can drive it back and I’ll drive the Jag back.”

“Sorry, no can do.”

“See, I told you, you wouldn’t.”

“No it’s more of a refusal to let you drive my car, and the consequences of Simon languishing in a maximum security prison because he killed one or both of us.”

“Don’t be daft,” she roared down the phone.

I blushed, but I wasn’t exaggerating. There was no way was going to let Stella drive my car, the Golf DTi which was in mothballs in the garage, or Daddy’s Mondeo.

The conversation was shortened when I was called to come and get him. I was horrified to see he had his leg in plaster of Paris. “Let’s go home,” he said, and felt for his keys. “Oh you’ve got them already. You didn’t wet that floor in the toilets did you?”

“Simon, how could you?” I was horrified to have him think that a, I could do such a thing, and b, doubly horrified to think he wondered if I’d been in the gents loo.

“I’m only joking,” he said, but his eyes weren’t laughing.

“I don’t think it’s very funny.” I protested loudly and pretended to start to cry.

“Oh don’t cry, Babes, come on, I’m happy for you to drive, honestly. It’s Stella, I don’t want near it.”

“She did offer to come up in my car and drive yours home for you.” I looked at him, “Simon, you’ve gone very pale, are you okay?”